Pan'Theon: Rise' of th'e Fal'Len - #1 Thread in MMO

gogojira_sl said:

It's like people forget that teenagers still exist with all the time in the world to piss around on MMOs. Crazy as shit, but there were 30-year-old people with kids and wives and all that when I was the dude who had too much free time.

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No shit. When people give the whole 'we aren't in college anymore' I wonder what kind of fucking idiot they have to be to have gotten a college degree (or at least gone to college) and not be able to comprehend there's an entire generation who ARE still young and wasting time like they don't give a fuck the same way we used to do.

If anything, look around at games today, and the popular ones are more competitive than ever with pvp and first-person shooters and rankings and leader boards and achievements and all sorts of shit we didn't used to have. If the industry produces a mmo where competition and achievement and epeening matter even half as much as it did in EQ, today's gamers would love that shit. The problem with the mmo industry is that it's become uncompetitive hand-holding bullshit. Hell, fuckers try to be competitive in games like GW2 before they realize it's pointless because it doesn't matter, everyone gets orange slices and caprisun after the game ends in a tie. Make it matter, like it did in EQ, and today's gamer will flock to that shit. Because honestly they put our competitiveness and epeening to shame, they just don't have a mmo to showcase it like we did.

Yep, no one gives a shit what others do anymore. In the height of EQ. Everyone was always checking out other guild websites to see who got world wide firsts. People love to have a huge E-Peen for that shit. Youknow damn well, every top guild member x all servers had other top guilds websites saved as their favorites. When a guild kill so and so mom, everyone on every fucking server knew within fucking minutes.

Games need that shit back.

fucking database error

Laura_sl said:

But didn't Brad state that he's making a game like EQ and Vanguard? That means it's generally PvE centric and targeted towards a niche audience (yeah I'd rather it would end up a lot more like EQ than Vanguard; but in essence both games share a lot of similarities). I just despise Vanguard's itemization system.

As for PvP; I think (just like Vanguard and EQ) there will be PvP servers but I wouldn't expect balanced game-play.

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I dont use twitter so I dont know what statements he made exactly. But "like EQ" encompasses a game that has no raids at all besides two single mobs sitting in a group dungeon (early '99) to basic 'raid or skip the expansion' (PoP) to whatever EQ became later on (no idea since I left it in 2004). Look how Tad10 puts his focus on having more then one raid *zone* ... I dont mind raid content at release but dont care if its missing really, because I want a long leveling game that draws me into the world. Raids can come later if at all. I'm rambling but my point with what you quoted is that even if he says "I'm making old school EQ" then that statement means something different to each of us.

Mr Creed_sl said:

I dont use twitter so I dont know what statements he made exactly. But "like EQ" encompasses a game that has no raids at all besides two single mobs sitting in a group dungeon (early '99) to basic 'raid or skip the expansion' (PoP) to whatever EQ became later on (no idea since I left it in 2004). Look how Tad10 puts his focus on having more then one raid *zone* ... I dont mind raid content at release but dont care if its missing really, because I want a long leveling game that draws me into the world. Raids can come later if at all. I'm rambling but my point with what you quoted is that even if he says "I'm making old school EQ" then that statement means something different to each of us.

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I remember Brad's philosophy developing Vanguard he said he wanted to create a game that the majority of its content is catered towards groups. Which is also true for EverQuest Vanilla. I'm not a fan of EverQuest post-Luclin and when I say EverQuest I usually mean EQ + Kunark + Velious. I've never enjoyed raiding when it was mandatory (as in PoP...) I despise a game where 90% of your character gear development comes from Raiding.

My favorite was Luclin era mainly because of AA I think. Before that when you got to the cap you only did stuff for items and I dont like the concept of all character growth being item-based. Raid-wise it wasnt as inflated as later expansions yet so that's another plus. I find Velious+Luclin meshed well together.

So that's your opinion + my opinion and we are already looking at two slightly different "ideal" EQ remakes. And that's not even touching things I would like that weren in EQ like seasons and season-based weather and some more immersion features. I dont mention that usually because it's obviously not in the cards for this project. Or at least, until we get that kickstarter with some specifics. maybe he'll surprise us with "no raids, endgame is group content"?

I just want a reason to level in groups and a throwback game that allows trains and multiple groups inside the same dungeon at the same time.

The main knock on luclin is that AA as a system really ended up causing EQ to be even harder to break into as a new player than it already was. Its one of those things that is fun when you first get it but long term after 16 expacs of it isnt so great. Also luclins group dungeons were kinda dogshit compared to velious. Greggs and achieva and ssra were all painful and poorly itemized compared to velks and kael, and even DN or sirens. It didnt make that old content worthless tho so as supplementary content for groupers it was ok i guess. For a endgame raider luclin offered better content prolly than velious, atleast once it was finished.

Velious was truer to classic EQ in that you had a ton of boss mob in group dungeon/zone raids. In fact outside of ntov and sleepers it was all like that. Velious's major triumph over luclin is prolly that it offered way way more things for small raids to do. A raid of 10-20 in velious had so many options from deep DN for weapons if you were undergeared to kael for armor, to halls and wtov if you were getting towards endgame. In fact I can't remember any EQ expac that catered to small raids like that.

Mr Creed_sl said:

My favorite was Luclin era mainly because of AA I think. Before that when you got to the cap you only did stuff for items and I dont like the concept of all character growth being item-based. Raid-wise it wasnt as inflated as later expansions yet so that's another plus. I find Velious+Luclin meshed well together...

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I think there is a good point in this. Most people disliked Luclin for poor character model changes and the stupid lore setting. If you take those away and replace the moon setting to a traditional "lost continent" setting with familiar looking NPCs and not fucking space aliens and snakes, it would have been viewed quite differently. Overall, the (raid) loot was amazing, the introduction of AAs were a game changer, and the small bump to lvl65 allowed for the mom and pop guilds to have their shots at NToV / AoW. Luclin added far more positive than negative in retrospect. I just wish it took place in an entirely different atmosphere.

I liked luclin. The zones in luclin and PoP to a degree felt like the last ones with a sense of wonder to me for a long time to come. It had so many strange and wondrous looking zones filled with the weirdest shit. Everything from sonic batwolves, to snakemen, to vampires in gothic cathedrals, to owlbears and blinding centipedes to catpeople to cavemen in giant mushroom forests. That was pretty unique and interesting to me, and the sort of thing I like to see in MMOs (the unexpected and known). I would love to see luclin remade in next. It was like the wonderland of everquest. Nexus is still my all time favorite hub for hanging out and socializing. It was so tight and compact with people coming and going all the time that you always saw people you knew when you ran through, and could shoot the breeze as you waited to port down to dreadlands or wherever.

By the time GoD/OoW rolled around, I officially checked out and stopped feeling norrath was a cool world to explore compared to WoW, which was just hitting shelves. The problem I remember with luclin was a lot of raid mobs were just boring HP sponges, terrible models, a really buggy launch, and AA were cool but in the long run became something that made the game inaccessible to newer players. I remember playing in VoA recently and it was kind of like, "If your paladin/SK doesn't have 2500aa, just use a merc tank."

Jysin_sl said:

I think there is a good point in this. Most people disliked Luclin for poor character model changes and the stupid lore setting. If you take those away and replace the moon setting to a traditional "lost continent" setting with familiar looking NPCs and not fucking space aliens and snakes, it would have been viewed quite differently. Overall, the (raid) loot was amazing, the introduction of AAs were a game changer, and the small bump to lvl65 allowed for the mom and pop guilds to have their shots at NToV / AoW. Luclin added far more positive than negative in retrospect. I just wish it took place in an entirely different atmosphere.

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Luclin didnt increases the level cap, just added AA. The raid loot didnt make a big jump from AoW/Ntov either, maybe some more resists and 25ish hp/mana more per pieceat the high end. You had that kinda jumpper tierin PoP and later, much faster mudflation. Personally I really liked Ssra and VT, both to group/raid and lore-wise. The rest of the zones, not so much. Mostly because it was so unfinished.

AA made it so alot more people continued to do group content at the cap and were less selective about what they did, instead of going only to the spot where their last upgrade or the twink loot dropped. They gave you a steady small improvement to your character without dulling your excitement about loot upgrades like WoW+ have done with the constant stream of items. They made the non-raid part of endgame be more similar to the leveling game because you are after xp, and you care about xp.

Just a side comment on Luclin... It was a least favorite as it felt so far out of place and stretch within the lore for me. Outside of that, I was irritated as a raiding player at the ridiculous amount of HP for mobs. I guess the main idea was to offset this with bane weapons so not only did you camp your eyeballs out for VT keys but to really do everything effectively that Luclin had, you also farmed bane weapons. It wasn't a terrible idea but I guess the main point is everything felt like a drastic change in direction. Nothing seems to be on the Everquest path and while everything was not awful, it felt odd or awkward and further from EQ. It wasn't for PoP, I don't know if I would have played EQ after Luclin.

tad10_sl said:

Fun factoid. Brad is one of the inventors on a type of in-game prospecting patent# 8,540,566 . Was applied for in 2011 but approved in September. Doubt it has anything to do with NewCo's game.

But what is interesting it is the patent was assigned to the defunct Maslow Six Entertainment/Council of Creators website which had a vaporware MMO: Sundered Sea. Again probably doesn't have anything to do with NewCo. But it's a slow newsday.

Council of Creators

So it looks like this was what Brad was working on before he rejoined SOE - so possibly he's not re-using SOE assets but maybe this abandoned IP.

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I know he was working on FB type games. At the time he told me there was no money to make a MMO with WoW killing things. You need to stop pulling this stuff out. A lot of people already think you're a Dev! lol nice find

Btw.. Velious should be used or looked at as how to approach raiding in his game. Was such a cool xpac.

Tol_sl said:

and AA were cool but in the long run became something that made the game inaccessible to newer players. I remember playing in VoA recently and it was kind of like, "If your paladin/SK doesn't have 2500aa, just use a merc tank."

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AA dont work well if you want to catch up the playerbase to the current endgame asap, you end up doing shit like giving out free 90 or free 240whateverlevels characters like WoW and EQ2. I always liked that in EQ1 back then you actually progressed through the content (maybe a faster) but you didnt jump over whole expansions gearwise in an evening. That's just a different mindset though, people that want to be at endgame asap even if they buy the game two years later wouldnt like it (we have plenty of those here too). It's another question McQuaid needs to answer to get me interested in his product, because what I want from this is a longterm game that doesnt invalidate 90% of its own content every other quarter and tries to rush you past it from then on.

Convo_sl said:

I know he was working on FB type games. At the time he told me there was no money to make a MMO with WoW killing things. You need to stop pulling this stuff out. A lot of people already think you're a Dev! lol nice find

Btw.. Velious should be used or looked at as how to approach raiding in his game. Was such a cool xpac.

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Velious was cool because of the setting imo. Wouldnt have been half as interesting if it was meadows and hills where sonic wolves fought grimlings and owlbears for supremacy.

Brad would be smart to just dig thru some early content in EQ. Take some of the coveted drops/quests and re implement them. Not so that they are an exact ripoff but make it that they feel familiar when we come across them. I think subtle things like that would go a long way. I said it before.. no need to reinvent the wheel here. If we are doing this on a tight budget it's ok to borrow things that worked. Nobody is going to rage on the game if it has an item that works similar to the jboots and is obtained in a similar way.

Convo_sl said:

I know he was working on FB type games.

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Ah, that explains that. Thanks, I was bored so I was uspto diving to see if I could find NewCo's trademark application. No luck.

@Laura. I'll take EQ combat over the current spaz "action" combat that is the norm today. Though I liked both vanilla WoW and beta VG combat as well. Those ended up becoming silly with hot bars eventually.

@Creed couldn't agree more about avoiding WoWish gear resets. Still a toss up as to which is the worst MMO idea to come out of Blizzard: having two factions that can't speak or group together or invalidating all prior content with each new expansion.

I just want a challenge, not a timesink. I don't care if it takes me a long time to level up because its hard, but I'll quickly lose interest if it takes me a long time to level up because its a "collect 10 bear pelts" time sink.

Some of the things I loved about eq that I would love to see make a comeback:

1. Punishment for poor or lazy play in the form of xp loss and corpse runs. Nothing holds your attention more than the possibility of a corpse run nightmare scenario if you get complacent.

2. EQ style itemization. I played a monk. When I saw a motherfucker with one of the class robes or the epic, I recognized and coveted that. That never once happened to me in wow except for that piccolo that made everyone around you dance.

3. I thought EQs quest system was the shit. Quests took time and community effort to figure out. Knowing the right keywords, brave people blindly turning items into questgivers way the fuck out in the middle of nowhere hoping the items wouldn't just get eaten, that made things feel so much more epic and mysterious.

4. Proficiencies. Challenging not up to snuff? Guess you'll just keep fizzling while an orc pawn hands you your ass. These added a bit of randomness to the experience and made you feel like a piece of shit early on, which made you that much more invested in your character as you grew.

Back when Brad did his Twitter q and a, some as what asked him how this game will make you feel epic from the beginning. NOPE. Fuck that. I want a fire beetle to teach me how to be a man.

I never did anything notable in eq besides hit max level on my main. I played a decent amount, but I was always running around the world exploring, camping new items, checking out quests and areas, etc., so I never progressed at the pace necessary to do anything more. But I had a blast playing the game because I got to choose my own adventure, instead of being strung along by quest chains that only changed cosmetically.

I will probably donate no matter what, but if most or all of the above are included, I will have an mmo I can actually enjoy again.

People say they want EQ combat as if it was the same in approach and feel for every class. It really wasn't. With my rogue I was mashing far fewer buttons than with my Beastlord. Whether people think that's for better or worse is personal opinion, but they were both EQ characters, EQ combat, and of the same era, and played very differently from each other.

With the Beastlord I was pretty much always spamming keys and micro managing my pet and filling roles that changed often, even in combat, so I had to pay attention. And with my rogue I usually watched tv and made sure I was in position, which generally just meant just standing in the clump of people dpsing behind the mob.

Each class had important roles to play, or course, the rogue actually mattering in corpse retrieval, which was cool about EQ and something that is lost in today's games, but as far as combat, the rogue was pretty boring and the BST was to the point of being a spammy, micro-managing shit-fest.

I wouldnt mind something like TERAs combat system. Let people solo elite type mobs if they want... Just punish them hard for making a mistake. Risk vs. Reward.